Harrison commends the great silence used at the tables of the wiser sort, and generally throughout the realm, and likewise the moderate eating and drinking. But the poorer countrymen do babble somewhat at table, and mistake ribaldry and loquacity for wit and wisdom, and occasionally are cup-shotten; and what wonder, when they who have hard diet and small drink at home come to such opportunities at a banquet! The wealthier sort in the country entertain their visitors from afar, however long they stay, with as hearty a welcome the last day as the first; and the countrymen contrast this hospitality with that of their London cousins, who joyfully receive them the first day, tolerate them the second, weary of them the third, and wish 'em at the devil after four days.
The gentry usually ate wheat bread, of which there were four kinds, and the poor generally bread made of rye, barley, and even oats and acorns. Corn was getting so dear, owing to the forestallers and middlemen, that, says the historian, “if the world last a while after this rate, wheat and rye will be no grain for poor men to feed on; and some catterpillers [two-legged speculators] there are that can say so much already.”
The great drink of the realm was, of course, beer (and it is to be noted that a great access of drunkenness came into England with the importation much later of Holland gin) made from barley, hops, and water, and upon the brewing of it Harrison dwells lovingly, and devotes many pages to a description of the process, especially as “once in a month practiced by my wife and her maid servants.” They ground eight bushels of malt, added half a bushel of wheat meal, half a bushel of oat meal, poured in eighty gallons of water, then eighty gallons more, and a third eighty gallons, and boiled with a couple of pounds of hops. This, with a few spices thrown in, made three hogsheads of good beer, meet for a poor man who had only forty pounds a year. This two hundred gallons of beer cost altogether twenty shillings; but although he says his wife brewed it “once in a month,” whether it lasted a whole month the parson does not say. He was particular about the water used: the Thames is best, the marsh worst, and clear spring water next worst; “the fattest standing water is always the best.” Cider and perry were made in some parts of England, and a delicate sort of drink in Wales, called metheglin; but there was a kind of “swish-swash” made in Essex from honey-combs and water, called mead, which differed from the metheglin as chalk from cheese.
In Shakespeare's day much less time was spent in eating and drinking than formerly, when, besides breakfast in the forenoon and dinners, there were “beverages” or “nuntion” after dinner, and supper before going to bed —“a toie brought in by hardie Canutus,” who was a gross feeder. Generally there were, except for the young who could not fast till dinnertime, only two meals daily, dinner and supper. Yet the Normans had brought in the habit of sitting long at the table—a custom not yet altogether abated, since the great people, especially at banquets, sit till two or three o'clock in the afternoon; so that it is a hard matter to rise and go to evening prayers and return in time for supper.
Harrison does not make much account of the early meal called “breakfast”; but Froude says that in Elizabeth's time the common hour of rising, in the country, was four o'clock, summer and winter, and that breakfast was at five, after which the laborers went to work and the gentlemen to business. The Earl and Countess of Northumberland breakfasted together and alone at seven. The meal consisted of a quart of ale, a quart of wine, and a chine of beef; a loaf of bread is not mentioned, but we hope (says Froude) it may be presumed. The gentry dined at eleven and supped at five. The merchants took dinner at noon, and, in London, supped at six. The university scholars out of term ate dinner at ten. The husbandmen dined at high noon, and took supper at seven or eight. As for the poorer sort, it is needless to talk of their order of repast, for they dined and supped when they could. The English usually began meals with the grossest food and ended with the most delicate, taking first the mild wines and ending with the hottest; but the prudent Scot did otherwise, making his entrance with the best, so that he might leave the worse to the menials.
I will close this portion of our sketch of English manners with an extract from the travels of Hentzner, who visited England in 1598, and saw the great queen go in state to chapel at Greenwich, and afterwards witnessed the laying of the table for her dinner. It was on Sunday. The queen was then in her sixty-fifth year, and “very majestic,” as she walked in the splendid procession of barons, earls, and knights of the garter: “her face, oblong, fair, but wrinkled; her eyes small, yet black and pleasant; her nose a little hooked; her lips narrow, and her teeth black (a defect the English seem subject to from their great use of sugar). She had in her ears two pearls with very rich drops; she wore false hair, and that red; upon her head she had a small crown, reported to be made of some of the gold of the celebrated Lunebourg table. Her bosom was uncovered, as all the English ladies have it till they marry; and she had on a necklace of exceeding fine jewels; her hands were small, her fingers long, and her stature neither small nor low; her air was stately, her manner of speaking mild and obliging. That day she was dressed in white silk, bordered with pearls of the size of beans, and over it a mantle of black silk, shot with silver threads; her train was very long, and the end of it borne by a marchioness; instead of a chain she had an oblong collar of gold and jewels.” As she swept on in this magnificence, she spoke graciously first to one, then to another, and always in the language of any foreigner she addressed; whoever spoke to her kneeled, and wherever she turned her face, as she was going along, everybody fell down on his knees. When she pulled off her glove to give her hand to be kissed, it was seen to be sparkling with rings and jewels. The ladies of the court, handsome and well shaped, followed, dressed for the most part in white; and on either side she was guarded by fifty gentlemen pensioners with gilt battle-axes. In the ante-chapel, where she graciously received petitions, there was an acclaim of “Long live Queen Elizabeth!” to which she answered, “I thank you, my good people.” The music in the chapel was excellent, and the whole service was over in half an hour. This is Hentzner's description of the setting out of her table:
“A gentleman entered the room bearing a rod, and along with him another who had a table-cloth, which, after they had both kneeled three times, he spread upon the table; and after kneeling again they both retired. Then came two others, one with the rod again, the other with a salt-cellar, a plate, and bread; and when they had kneeled as the others had done, and placed what was brought upon the table, they two retired with the same ceremonies performed by the first. At last came an unmarried lady (we were told she was a countess) and along with her a married one, bearing a tasting-knife; the former was dressed in white silk, who, when she had prostrated herself three times, in the most graceful manner approached the table, and rubbed the plates with bread and salt, with as much awe as if the Queen had been present. When they had waited there a little while the Yeomen of the Guard entered, bare-headed, clothed in scarlet, with a golden rose upon their backs, bringing in at each turn a course of twenty-four dishes, served in plate, most of it gilt; these dishes were received by a gentleman in the same order they were brought, and placed upon the table, while the Lady Taster gave to each of the guard a mouthful to eat, of the particular dish he had brought, for fear of, any poison. During the time that this guard, which consists of the tallest and stoutest men that can be found in all England, being carefully selected for this service, were bringing dinner, twelve trumpets and two kettle-drums made the hall ring for half an hour together. At the end of all this ceremonial, a number of unmarried ladies appeared, who with particular solemnity lifted the meat off the table and conveyed it into the Queen's inner and more private chamber, where, after she had chosen for herself, the rest goes to the Ladies of the court.”
The queen dined and supped alone, with very few attendants. II
We now approach perhaps the most important matter in this world, namely, dress. In nothing were the increasing wealth and extravagance of the period more shown than in apparel. And in it we are able to study the origin of the present English taste for the juxtaposition of striking and uncomplementary colors. In Coryat's “Crudities,” 1611, we have an Englishman's contrast of the dress of the Venetians and the English. The Venetians adhered, without change, to their decent fashion, a thousand years old, wearing usually black: the slender doublet made close to the body, without much quilting; the long hose plain, the jerkin also black—but all of the most costly stuffs Christendom can furnish, satin and taffetas, garnished with the best lace. Gravity and good taste characterized their apparel. “In both these things,” says Coryat, “they differ much from us Englishmen. For whereas they have but one color, we use many more than are in the rainbow, all the most light, garish, and unseemly colors that are in the world. Also for fashion we are much inferior to them. For we wear more fantastical fashions than any nation under the sun doth, the French only excepted.” On festival days, in processions, the senators wore crimson damask gowns, with flaps of crimson velvet cast over their left shoulders; and the Venetian knights differed from the other gentlemen, for under their black damask gowns, with long sleeves, they wore red apparel, red silk stockings, and red pantofles.
Andrew Boord, in 1547, attempting to describe the fashions of his countrymen, gave up the effort in sheer despair over the variety and fickleness of costume, and drew a naked man with a pair of shears in one hand and a piece of cloth in the other, to the end that he should shape his apparel as he himself liked; and this he called an Englishman. Even the gentle Harrison, who gives Boord the too harsh character of a lewd popish hypocrite and ungracious priest, admits that he was not void of judgment in this; and he finds it easier to inveigh against the enormity, the fickleness, and the fantasticality of the English attire than to describe it. So unstable is the fashion, he says, that today the Spanish guise is in favor; tomorrow the French toys are most fine and delectable; then the high German apparel is the go; next the Turkish manner is best liked, the Morisco gowns, the Barbary sleeves, and the short French breeches; in a word, “except it were a dog in a doublet, you shall not see any so disguised as are my countrymen in England.”